How Ancient Egyptians Sounded

What did ancient Egyptians sound like? Professor of Egyptology and Archaeology Laurel Bestock explains how we know.


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[seyeruoynepotsuj]

I didn't expect my takeaway to be regarding the positive historical accuracy of the mummy movies.

[AnastasiaPlantlegs]

Imhotep was one of the first artists in history whose name we still have today. It's simply the coolest thing ever to me to hear what ancient people called themselves, and to know he was so important too

[Usiris]

The Mummy was such a banger. Prime Brenden Fraser and Racheal Weisz 💪🏽

[Chicamyquitas]

I need a full 2 hours with this lady on this topic

[miritallstag]

I think people forget that ancient Egypt lasted a long time. Like long. The pyramids were as ancient to Cleopatra as she is to us.

[darkhighwayman]

I worked for an IT company...there was a SQL job named Imhotep that would move files to their afterlife after a set time in storage.

[aidinexmachina]

The Mummy was one of my mom's favorite movies. Probably watched it on VHS together more times than I can count as a kid. Ironically, it came on during one of my last few hospital visits. We watched it together, and even though she wasn't doing all that great, I'm glad we watched it one more time. I'm sure she'd be really happy to know the Egyptian was accurate.

[mralloc]

I can't believe a movie exists where Brendan Frasier shoots a revolver 21 times without reloading, but then it has historically accurate ancient Egyptian speaking scenes.

[otopharaoh]

The mummy single-handedly made me want to be an archaeologist as a kid 😭 later on Indiana Jones as well. I love the mummy so much and still I’m so fascinated by ancient Egypt.

[joannagarcia]

I wish this was around when I was in elementary school. Covering ancient Egypt was my favorite back then

[gandalf]

Imagine being one of the best architects in human history and becoming the standard villain of every Egyptian mummy movie thousands of years in the future.

[xXKillaBGXx]

Early Egypt era and late Egyptian under Greek/Roman rule are vastly different although they both can be under the umbrella term “Ancient Egypt”.

[asadmalik]

The mummy was such a legendary movie fr

[DieselVR]

Coptic Orthodox Christian here. Thanks for the shout out. Not only have we preserved and perform parts of our liturgy in Coptic, but the hymns we sing have similar rhythm and melody as the pharaonic songs.

[OcarinaSapphr-]

I have **always** wondered if films like 'The Mummy' & 'Stargate's' Egyptian was gibberish, or there was linguists working on them...

[snopure]

Really simplistic answer, though. The liturgical Coptic is only a snapshot in the timeline of the language. Languages change over time in multiple ways. The standard version of the language spoken around the time Khufu's pyramid was built would have some differences to the standard Egyptian spoken in King Tut's time, which would likewise be somewhat different to the language Cleopatra VII learned. There would be similarities of course, but a language can't not undergo significant changes after over thousands of years of use. Egyptian of different periods can be reconstructed by comparing hieroglyphic texts. The hieroglyphs are thankfully phonetic, so each one is assigned a value. This aspect helps in discovering changes in both phonology and morphology of ancient Egyptian in its various stages.

[XavierVB]

That one line “Hieroglyphics don’t make sound” is hilarious because neither do letters. They’re just supposed to be transcriptions of our speech

Edit: I don’t think some of y’all know how to read. Some of y’all are just looking at the letters without comprehending what they mean

[Josephgmark]

I am a Christain Egyptian and can speak Coptic as it is still taught in churches. It is so cool that Christains managed to preserve such an acncient language.

[JasmineSheaTownsend]

Amazing 😭 "The Mummy" was one of the first movies that sparked my love for learning languages.
Tiny-me would sit down with a notebook and try to write down what they were saying 😭💕

[TheDragiix]

Only thing I would add is that Coptic is indeed the FINAL stage and so we can reconstruct it. However, Egypt existed for millenia... The chance of the language never undergoing extreme changes in pronunciation is practically 0. Moreover, we probably don't even know just how severely or how often these changes occured. Ancient egyptian might have been pretty stable in its pronunciation, or it might have changed drastically every few centuries, which wouldn't be noticable through the writing (unless new combinations pop up or old ones vanish etc)